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6 Things I've learned teaching myself to code.

Michael Minshew on February 26, 2018

I'm writing this post in response to a post I read last night by Alex Smith https://dev.to/ajsmithsw/the-advantages-of-being-self-taught-2lcj. I ...
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brandonelance profile image
brandone-lance

Great post; thanks for sharing!

I was reminded by (5) of something I read a long while back. The jist of it was that techy people (whether developers or other) tend to love trying out the newest toys, tools, and tech... but rarely stick with them. Instead, they'll try them out, see what they're all about, and then go back to their own preferred tried and true standby, with no regard for how popular that standby is.

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Michael Minshew

I'm addicted to trying out text editors usually do go back lol.

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Eljay-Adobe

I use Vim. Day-in-and-day-out. I've been using it for about 20 years.

You might think that I'm an advocate, and evangelizing about how awesome it is. (Well, it actually is awesome.)

My fingers know it tacitly. The editor gets out of my way. It's zen-like.

But no, that's not the case. My advice is: IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME! SAVE YOURSELF!

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Michael Minshew • Edited

Haha, I actually have been teaching myself vim as its useful for server work. I think i'll keep atom for my regular work but I appreciate vims simplicity, at least I appreciate it until I forget how to exit for 5 minutes lol.

I will add that I do live the fact that I can pushd to a location touch a file and then edit on the spot. Never leaving the command line is great for focus and I appreciate that.

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eljayadobe profile image
Eljay-Adobe

Also there is the whole "emacs vs vi" flame war that was raging decades ago, only remembered by neckbeards like myself. I was an emacs user, tried vi for six months, and never went back to emacs. The other dev with whom we had bet to switch editors, immediately went back to vi after having used emacs for six months.

I know, there are emacs fans out there. After having used it for years, I can say that it is an impressive development environment, an operating system unto itself, and really an entire religion... the only thing it lacks is a decent text editor.

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Felice Forby

Interesting that you jumped into multiple languages at once! I actually had a really hard time getting the basics of programming when I first started learning my first languages. It wasn't until after I had to learn another one, that I realized there were so many similarities. Using multiple resources was also a big one for me. Thanks for the inspiring post!

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Michael Minshew

I think it only worked for me because I had a really strong background in tech. I had been reading programming material and blogs for a few years already and spent a lot of time trying to understand the basics long before I ever jumped into actual programming.

I'm still a novice by far but I'm learning more every day but I know that by jumping into several languages at once it helped me pick up things more quickly in the long run. Thanks for the encouragement!

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Alain Van Hout

A nice list :-).

With the first one "Be willing to throw away everything, the best, right solution is all that matters", it's however important to temper that when working in a business context: sometimes 'good enough' is indeed good enough. Balance is everything :).

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Michael Minshew

Absolutely, balance is everything. Personally, I find myself sticking to something far longer than I should just because the puzzle fixer in me can't let go. Or I get sentimental about something I wrote and annoyed when someone just wants to throw it away for whatever reason. I hope some of that goes away when I've been coding long enough to have tons of code and not care as much.

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xjrmncm

Absolutely great post.

I myself is still in the process of finding my “comfort zone” and still trying a lot of different tools and learning materials. Your post really helped me to be more comfortable of exploring more and not to be pressured with what other developers are saying. Thank you very much for sharing.

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Michael Minshew

Glad to hear it was an encouragement. Keep exploring and you'll do great!